UCLA Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity

Can music help autistic children connect with the emotional world around them

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:10:45 -0700

Ever since psychiatrist Leo Kanner first introduced the term “autism” in 1943 and noted that several of his subjects showed musical affinity, therapists have amassed evidence that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) frequently respond to melody and rhythm. Some are able to recognize, recreate or remember pitches at a skill level that matches or even exceeds neuro-typical children. In one particularly dramatic case, the blind, autistic savant Leslie Lemke shocked his mother by playing the entirety of Tchaikovsky’s "Piano Concerto No. 1" after hearing it once on television. Lemke went on to tour the world giving note-perfect performances of complex compositions. But for all the heaps of behavioral evidence gathered over the years, no one has explored why. What’s happening in the brain of someone with ASD that allows music to make neurological connections no other emotional stimulus can?

That is the mystery Dr. Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, research neuroscientist at the UCLA Semel Institute’s Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity, aims to unlock in a new study funded by the GRAMMYFoundation.

New publication on Mental Time Travel co-authored by center investigator Istvan Molnar-Szakacs

Istvan Molnar-Szakacs — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:00:00 +01100

Conscious awareness of the self as continuous through time is attributed to the human ability to remember the past and to predict the future, a cogitation that has been called "mental time travel" (MTT). MTT allows one to re-experience one's own past by subjectively "locating" the self to a previously experienced place and time, or to pre-experience an event by locating the self into the future. Here, we used a novel behavioral paradigm in combination with evoked potential mapping and electrical neuroimaging, revealing that MTT is composed of two different cognitive processes: absolute MTT, which is the location of the self to different points in time (past, present, or future), and relative MTT, which is the location of one's self with respect to the experienced event (relative past and relative future). These processes recruit a network of brain areas in distinct time periods including the occipitotemporal, temporoparietal, and anteromedial temporal cortices. Our findings suggest that in addition to autobiographical memory processes, the cognitive mechanisms of MTT also involve mental imagery and self-location, and that relative MTT,but not absolute MTT,is more strongly directed to future prediction than to past recollection.

Autism One Radio interviews Dr. Istvan Molnar-Szakacs about study using music to explore emotion understanding in autism

Wed, 28 May 2008 15:12:47 -0700

Music evokes emotion in children with autism

Istvan Molnar-Szakacs — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:00:00 -0700

Children with autism struggle to understand social and emotional cues from other people’s actions or words: that is one of autism’s cardinal features, in fact. These same children respond to music, however, understanding emotions conveyed through non-verbal musical cues. And music therapy has been shown to improve autistic symptoms such as verbal communication, agitation and social interaction deficits.

In an upcoming study funded by a $40,000 grant from the GRAMMY Foundation, Istvan Molnar-Szakacs is planning functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on 15 high-functioning children autism between the ages of 9 and 13 and 15 age- and sex-matched typically developing controls.

Study uses music to explore the autistic brain's emotion processing

Istvan Molnar-Szakacs — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:24:35 -0700

Music has a universal ability to tap into our deepest emotions. Unfortunately, for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), understanding emotions is a very difficult task. Can music help them?

Thanks to funding from the GRAMMY Foundation Grant Program, researchers at UCLA are about to find out.

Individuals with ASD have trouble recognizing emotions, particularly social emotions conveyed through facial expressions — a frown, a smirk or a smile. This inability can rob a child of the chance to communicate and socialize and often leads to social isolation.

For more information, visit www.grammyintheschools.com and www.semel.ucla.edu/creativity.